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One of the items on the agenda of the recent meeting on United Cities and Local Governments – Middle East and West Asia (UCLG-MEWA) was election of a new chairman for the organization. On the first day of the conference and upon a proposal by the Mayor of Gaza and approval of all the member states, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was elected chairman.

According to Tehran SAMA, UCLG-MEWA Secretary General Mehmet Duman commenting on Ghalibaf's election, said: "The Mayor of Tehran definitely deserves the chairmanship of UCLG-MEWA thanks to his activities. I visited Tehran in 1995 accompanying Recep Erdogan who was the mayor of Istanbul at that time. The Tehran Metro had just started construction at that time but today I see it has developed and improved all citizens’ lives. All the member states could personally witness the developments that have taken place here in Tehran."

He added: "We held fruitful working sessions in Tehran and Dr. Ghalibaf was elected the regional chairman, something that must have happened because he has been a very active mayor. We thank him and his colleagues for that matter and hope these activities will continue."

Duman also stated: "ULCG-MEWA meets every three years and the Board of Directors, the General Council members were elected who will in office for three years. Also UCLG-MEWA chairman and five co-chairmen were also elected during the Tehran conference. Dr. Ghalibaf had also been elected chairman at Istanbul meeting and he was reelected for another three years during Tehran confab. We also hope more municipalities from Iran and other regional countries would join UCLG-MEWA."

UCLG-MEWA Secretary General concluded by saying: "The most important aim of UCLG-MEWA organization is to use experiences of all member municipalities. UCLG has expanded over the past couple of years. Here we had a chance to learn more about urbanization model of Tehran and Iran in general and benefit from this experience. We believe that Tehran Municipality has experiences which it can transfer to other municipalities. We had great time while in Tehran and could use the experiences of Tehran Metropolis."